“There is No Right Answer” (Kingston’s Short Story #15 [Age 23])

Money or Time: There is No Right Answer

This one bleeds from 22 to 23. It was my first year out of college and I was sticking with the game plan of getting that good corporate job so that I could have a high income and save all I could by keeping costs low. Reasoning behind it was that I wanted to use what I saved to spend my 30’s and beyond without financial worry and travel as much as I want.

Translation: 20’s would be sacrificed for a possibility of a different from the norm life during a different life stage.

There’s Always a Price to Be Paid

I remember one day after committing to the course, I was crunching numbers in my cube and I looked outside. It was a bright, beautiful, summer day, the lush green leaves were blowing in the breeze.
There I was stuck behind my desk and I thought to myself, “am I going to be working as a corporate cog for the next 7-8 years? And at what cost? I will no longer be considered a youth after this stretch.”
It was a hard question, but eventually I came to the conclusion that, “No, it’s not.”
The long end of the preparation put into after making the decision that no, it was not worth it goes beyond the scope of this article.

A Mountain or An Anthill

Fast forward to the hardest email I’ve ever made in my life. The “I’m quitting email,” I sent to my boss.

A rather simple message to send, that got over complicated. I spent countless hours in the evening researching the proper format for the email and when the time came to send off the 3 week notice, I spent more hours hovering over the “send” button of the email after drafting and redrafting the message.

It was a big decision because I knew at that point that I was throwing away all common, mainstream beliefs I grew up with.
And I haven’t looked back since.

I’ve found that some of the simplest things to do often is the hardest because we make it so. They are all mental barriers.

The common saying is “making mountains out of ant hills.

The first time is always the most difficult, but each proceeding time the fear shrinks and your confidence grows.

I learned that later on when learning how to: